Mercy
by Coffee and Cyanide
Summary: Yes, I know. Hate me. This is, and I'll say this and await flames. COMPLETELY BASED OFF OF THE MOVIE. Basically, me sketching out The Salesman from the movie. So, flame away. Hate me. But please read :)


Mercy

I.

"Would you like a cigarette?" He offers. She takes, resting the white cylinder against her red lips. The silencer whispers against her satin dress. And he holds her as she dies.

He wonders if holding dying people is any different than grabbing onto living people you can never hold. They both feel like moths between palms, drawn to fire only to burn. People are drawn to each other only to fly straight into a burning light bulb. Even tungsten brands if hot enough.

He only embraced women when they died. Even his mother, who he clung to when he had been born, was dying. He remembered feeling her sink into the hospital bed sheets, just as he feels this woman sink into the concrete. If he leans down he can hear her heart stop, smell her perfume and wonder why people are the most beautiful right before they die.

Maybe it is an illusion, the plumping of her lips before her last breath passes. Maybe it's the way her limp body fits perfectly between his elbows and she doesn't protect when he inhales the scent of her hair. Maybe it's the way she looks at him, eyes widening slightly, and then the slight smile. She'd known.

She'd paid him.

II.

He met the woman on the street corner. She'd been tilted, her back pressed against the bricks, thighs straddling the fire hydrant. She'd been tipping, her heels scraping the concrete as her hands scraped through her purse for a cigarette. He'd offered, holding the carton out to her.

"Thanks." She'd said, and he knew she was looking for two kinds of work. The work which she handed out pieces of herself, and the one where he took pieces of other people. She kept fragments of her soul between her thighs, afraid if she clenched them together too tightly she'd suffocate, but unwilling to run, because then it might fly away.

He thought she might be beautiful. But he never looked into her eyes, because he only saw the dead gaze back. He'd always imagine the glazing over of a person's eyes, like ice forming on a cup of water. It always started in one corner, creeping across whites threaded with reds, over the iris, pupil and finally to the tear ducts. Always moving inward to meet at the nose, where his gaze and hands would rest, fingertips feeling for the hint of breaths.

"No problem." She let him touch her, feeling the outside corner of her hip with gentle fingers. His knuckles grazing her curves, stroking from inside to out. From more intimate to less. Then she'd kissed him, or maybe she'd just pressed her lips to his to feel someone else's breath.

III.

The motel's chair welcomed them with an open embrace. The weathered arms could hold them both at the same time, trying to make the room seem less lonely.

He wasn't going to make love to her, but they pressed together in wistful mockery of the thought. He was listening to her pulse, and he wondered if this is what it felt like to die. Sinking into the bed, hearing someone else's heart louder than his own. He wanted to look at her, slide the straps of her dress off and see if he could trace the veins in her wrists back to her heart. If the sound was as misleading as he'd like to think.

Her breath caught, jerking his head, and she hiccupped their kiss back up between her fingers and into the air. He watched it float away, eyes drifting from the window to the ceiling to the t.v., which they hadn't bothered to turn off. It crackled and was playing the news, she looked to it, but wasn't watching it. Her fingertips moved in slow snail shell spirals though his hair, searching for the seam which held his skull together. As if she could unzip it and take a look inside.

"Tomorrow." She said, naming her time. He felt her move before he saw her thin body slide over to the window.

She stood in front of the cross on the pane, chin tilted up, nose pointing to the back corner of the room. He focused on her lips as they moved, reminded of shadow puppets, cut outs of what people thought were human. She was telling him her story, because she felt the need to explain herself. He watched her profile darken as the sun rose, and didn't listen.

He wouldn't have understood, anyway.

The closer to the sun that you are, the darker everything becomes.

The brighter the day, the darker the view.

She might have said that.

IV.

The check she had promised him was signed for 500. Two for killing her and three for making her feel loved before he'd pulled the trigger. He pulled a cigarette from the pack, rolling it between his fingers, eyes looping with the signature's letters.

Sitting in the old leather chair, he pretended he was dying, letting the arms embrace him. He looked to the window and pretended that he could see her silhouette. Pressing the check to his ear he smelled her perfume, and listened.

There was no heartbeat, only static.


End file.
